Introduction

We live in a time of deep interest in—if not obsession with—the problems of health and disease. In modern Western cultures, a day never passes without announcement of some medical finding, new risks to health, or new treatments for disease. For those who are media vigilant, questions about the consumption of cholesterol (good or bad), alcohol (red wine or white), exercise, diet, and a host of other specified “risk factors” are daily fare. Increasingly, we are told that new knowledge gives us new opportunities to take control of our health. With this new knowledge, however, come new responsibilities and a new set of moral expectations about health and disease. It is this growing recognition of the links between behavior and disease that formed the context for the genesis of the chapters in this book.